2000 Yen 2000, Japan

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Description

Watermark:

Shureimon (守礼門).

Avers:

Shureimon (守礼門?) is a gate in the Shuri neighborhood of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. It is the second of Shuri Castle's main gates, built between 1527 and 1555

It was first built in the XVI century, and the structure of the gate is similar to that of Chinese three-bay turret gates, and is covered with a red tiled hip roof. The four Hanzi framed on the gate - Shu, rei, no, and kuni, which mean "Land of Propriety" - were added to the gate long after it was built. It was also called Shurimon (首里門, "Shuri gate") and Wī nu Aijō (上ぬ綾門, "Beautiful gate at the upper part") in the local dialect. The gate reflects strong Chinese influence, alongside indigenous religious traditions.

The gate was destroyed in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa and reconstructed through local campaigns and support in the 1950s and 1960s. It became the first part of the Shuri Castle to be reconstructed, while decades would follow until the rest of the castle was restored. The main columns are 7.94 meters apart. The top layer of the gate is 7.05 meters high, and the lower layer 5.11 meters. The 4 pillars stand on foundation stones, and they are supported on front and back by slanting accessory pillars for better stability.

Shuri Castle (首里城 Shuri-jō, Okinawan: Sui Gushiku) is a Ryukyuan gusuku in Shuri, Okinawa. Between 1429 and 1879, it was the palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom, before becoming largely neglected. In 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa, it was almost completely destroyed. After the war, the castle was re-purposed as a university campus. Beginning in 1992, the central citadel and walls were largely reconstructed on the original site based on historical records, photographs, and memory.

At the top, centered, is Aster tataricus, also called Tatarinow's aster. It is a member of the Aster genus of flowering plants.

It is one of the 50 fundamental herbs of Traditional Chinese medicine, where it has the name zǐwǎn (Chinese: 紫菀). It has an antibacterial action, inhibiting the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Bacillus dysenteriae, B. typhi, Pseudomonas and Vibrio proteus.

In Japan, Aster tataricus is known as shion, or 紫苑. The flower has a meaning in Japanese language of flowers, which corresponds to "I won't forget you."

At the bottom, centered, is the red seal of teh Bank of Japan.

Denominations in numerals are in top corners. In words on left side, centered.

Revers:

On left side is a scene from the "The Tale of Genji". The motif of the scene was taken from the XII century illuminated handscrolls of the novel "The Genji Monogatari Emaki" (Chapter 38, The Bell Cricket (Meloimorpha japonicus)), kept at the Tokugawa Art Museum, in Nagoya.

The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji monogatari) is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu in the early years of the 11th century in "concertina" or "orihon" style made of several sheets of paper pasted together and folded alternately in one direction then the other (Lyons, 2011), around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be considered a classic. Notably, the work also illustrates a unique depiction of the lifestyles of high courtiers during the Heian period. While regarded as a masterpiece, its precise classification and influence in both the Western and Eastern canons has been a matter of debate.

The Genji Monogatari Emaki (源氏物語絵巻), also called "The Tale of Genji Scroll", is a famous illustrated hand scroll of the Japanese literature classic "The Tale of Genji" from the XII century, perhaps c. 1120-1140. The surviving sections, now broken up and mounted for conservation reasons, represent only a small proportion of the original work (if it was complete) and are now divided between two museums in Japan, Tokugawa Art Museum and the Gotoh Museum, where they are only briefly exhibited, again for conservation reasons. Both groups are National Treasures of Japan. It is the earliest text of the work and the earliest surviving work in the Yamato-e tradition of narrative illustrated scrolls, which has continued to impact Japanese art, arguably up to the present day. The painted images in the scroll show a tradition and distinctive conventions that are already well developed, and may well have been several centuries in the making.

The word emaki stems from the word "emakimono" meaning "picture scrolls". The emakimono picture scrolls consisted of two designs: Pictures that were painted on a scroll with text added to the same scroll or a number of paintings that accompanied passages of text and were joined together in a scroll. The first known picture scroll was produced in Japan during the late ninth or tenth century. The Genji Monogatari picture scroll, however, was produced in the early twelfth century. Not only is the Genji Monogatari Emaki the oldest surviving monogatari scroll but it is also the oldest surviving non-Buddhist scroll in Japan. There is no exact date to the scroll, but it is estimated to being sometime between 1120 and 1140, in which case it was created just a little over a century after Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji.

The Genji Monogatari Emaki scroll differs in almost all values and art styles of the Chinese which leads to the assumption that the Genji Monogatari Emaki comes from Japanese art forms. The purpose for the construction of the scroll was to provide a visual depiction, and further explanation, of the novel The Tale of Genji.

A scene of Kashiwagi. All paintings were produced by "tsukuri-e" process.

The original scroll was about 450 feet long. It consisted of twenty rolls, contained over 100 paintings, and had over 300 sheets of calligraphy. The surviving scrolls of The Genji Monogatari Emaki, however, are not a complete depiction of The Tale of Genji. It consists of only 19 paintings, 65 sheets of text, and 9 pages of fragments housed in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya and the Gotoh Museum in Tokyo. The surviving scroll amounts to about 15 percent of the original scroll.

In lower right corner is the image of Murasaki Shikibu, taken from the Gotoh edition of "the Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki", held at the Gotoh Museum.

The Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki (紫式部日記絵巻 Murasaki Shikibu nikki emaki) is a mid-XIII century emaki, a Japanese picture scroll, inspired by the private diary (nikki) of Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting at the X/XI centuries Heian court and author of The Tale of Genji. This emaki belongs to the classical style of Japanese painting known as yamato-e and revives the iconography of the Heian period.

Today there remain four paper scrolls of the emaki in varying condition and stored in different collections: Hachisuka, Matsudaira, Hinohara scrolls (Tokyo), and Fujita scroll (Fujita Art Museum, Osaka). Of the extant scrolls, the first relates the celebrations on occasion of the birth of prince Atsunari (Atsuhira, later Emperor Go-Ichijō) in 1008 and the last those of the birth of Prince Atsunaga (later Emperor Go-Suzaku) in 1009. This difference in time indicates that the original emaki most likely consisted of more scrolls than exist today.

Murasaki Shikibu (紫 式部, English: Lady Murasaki; c. 973 or 978 – c. 1014 or 1031) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012. Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name; her personal name is unknown, but she may have been Fujiwara no Takako (藤原 香子), who was mentioned in a 1007 court diary as an imperial lady-in-waiting.

Heian women were traditionally excluded from learning Chinese, the written language of government, but Murasaki, raised in her erudite father's household, showed a precocious aptitude for the Chinese classics and managed to acquire fluency. She married in her mid-to late twenties and gave birth to a daughter before her husband died, two years after they were married. It is uncertain when she began to write The Tale of Genji, but it was probably while she was married or shortly after she was widowed. In about 1005, Murasaki was invited to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi at the Imperial court, probably because of her reputation as a writer. She continued to write during her service, adding scenes from court life to her work. After five or six years, she left court and retired with Shōshi to the Lake Biwa region. Scholars differ on the year of her death; although most agree on 1014, others have suggested she was alive in 1031.

Murasaki wrote The Diary of Lady Murasaki, a volume of poetry, and The Tale of Genji. Within a decade of its completion, Genji was distributed throughout the provinces; within a century it was recognized as a classic of Japanese literature and had become a subject of scholarly criticism. Early in the 20th century her work was translated; a six-volume English translation was completed in 1933. Scholars continue to recognize the importance of her work, which reflects Heian court society at its peak. Since the XIII century her works have been illustrated by Japanese artists and well-known ukiyo-e woodblock masters.

At the bottom, right of center, is the red seal of teh Bank of Japan.

Denominations in numerals are in lower left and top right corners.

Comments:

A commemorative banknote, issued in honor of the 26th G8 summit, held in 2000 in Nago, Okinawa.